GIA Certification: What’s The Big Deal?

August 13, 2015

If you’re in the market for a diamond ring, you’ve probably seen several of these: GIA, EGL, HRD, AGS, IJS. The list goes on and on. Realistically, any graduate gemologist can put three letters together and create a diamond certificate. When you are shopping for diamonds, you need to understand what certification means, and how a certification can help you get the best deal possible.

From time to time, we meet customers that have their own preference for grading certificates, and we keep a range of certifications for those situations. However, we prefer GIA certifications over others for a very simple reason: We trust them.

We understand that the diamond buying process can be tricky for a person that doesn’t deal with diamonds regularly. When you walk into any jewelry store, you are automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to diamond knowledge.

Some stores take advantage of that fact, but we have built our brand by using our one-on-one appointment setting to serve as an educational opportunity for our customers. Informed buyers that we have established a trusting relationship with tend to come back more often than not!

A GIA certification is a useful tool that provides our customers with an accurate, independent assessment of their diamond.

GIA is the gold standard for diamond certification, not only for it’s strong reputation, but for many other reasons as well. It’s our professional opinion that they offer the most accuracy, consistency, and the strictest guidelines for diamonds that we sell to our customers. We feel that it’s the only way to accurately compare similar diamonds and their prices when shopping.

At the end of the day, not all diamond certificates are alike.

Accuracy

Unlike other diamond certificates, GIA does not have issues with grade variation across their many laboratories spread out over the world. Also, GIA certificates are extremely accurate from city to city, which is rarely the case for certificates like EGL. Many people are not aware of this, but EGL USA, EGL Israel, and EGL International are non-related entities. This means that an “EGL certified” diamond can vary dramatically compared to a GIA certification, which is issued by one world-wide organization.

In other certificates, we see wide variations as high as two to three grades when it comes to color and clarity. For example, the same diamond could be certified as VS1 with H color in one city, and SI2 with J color in another. GIA simply doesn’t have these extreme variations, which allows us to give more accurate information to our customers. We have also found that it is impossible to compare GIA and EGL lab reports on similar diamonds. Similar H color, SI1 clarity diamonds could yield as much as a 50% price difference between GIA and EGL certificates! Over our 25 years in business, we have found that GIA diamond grades are far more reliable than any other certificate in the industry.

Independent Certification

Most large mall and online jewelry stores certify their stones on-site. While we could do this as well (we have qualified graduate gemologists at Jonathan’s), we feel that an independent lab report outside of our store gives our diamond grades a higher level of legitimacy. Unlike 95% of other diamond certificates, GIA is a non-profit organization. We believe that this brings a higher level of legitimacy and non-bias to their grading process.

Strict Guidelines

When you receive your GIA lab report from us, you can rest assured that the diamond is exactly what we say it is. GIA’s strict guidelines helps us back up our reputation as Houston’s premier diamond wholesaler. In case you were wondering – GIA will certify diamonds that are chemically treated, moissanite, or lab created diamonds, but they always clearly label these stones in their lab report. They also laser inscribe the stone modifications on the diamond’s girdle.

If you are searching for a loose diamond, or want to create a custom engagement ring designed around the diamond that you choose, drop by for an appointment to check out our massive GIA certified diamond inventory. Our diamond experts will take the time to show you as many diamonds as you’d like, and will always allow you to view their GIA certificates at any point in time.

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